Minority Minority

Have you ever seen or experienced parents who love other’s children more than their own? We are just like those parents as far as religion is concerned.

We make fun of the beard and the veil, absolute symbols of mainstream Islam, but we do not consider making fun of them anything at all; neither a violation of religious honor nor a violation of personal beliefs.

We are bent upon proving Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan to be a secular state; a violation of the masses’ point-of-view and a violation of history. Conduct statistics. Ask the simple question ‘Why was Pakistan created?’ The majority will reply, ‘Islam’. It is what we have logically learnt from our schools and what has been narrated to us by our ancestors who were part of the freedom movement. To this the reply will be that our textbooks have been contorted and our masses are illiterate and do not know anything. Well, literate or illiterate, what happened to the spirit of democracy that ‘Majority is authority’? Not that I agree with the blindfolded concept of ‘majority is authority’, but I said it because it is generally understood this way and hence to drive a point home. And who would decide and declare since when our textbooks have started to be tampered with under foreign agenda? I also fail to understand the need of separation from India if we had a secular state in mind. We could easily have lead secular lives in India.

The Afghans struggled a long war against the Soviets and beat them out. They then formed their own government, in accordance with their religious beliefs. These religious beliefs, core Islam, are a minority in the world today. The majority did not like this minority’s choice and form of governance. They moved in for the kill.

What happened to the rights of minority in this global village? How many presidents spoke out? How many NGO’s spoke out? How many individual’s spoke out? Hardly any. And how could they? Only three countries of the world chose to recognize the newly formed government of Afghanistan of Talibans in 1996. Nearly all were pleased deep inside when the Talibans were ousted because they were very uncomfortable about giving space to this minority. What happened to minority’s rights here?

It seems like every minority of the world has rights and has the right to survive, including gays and lesbians, except the Muslims.

Even Muslims themselves are very eager to protect the rights non-Muslims, but are not interested in protecting the rights of Muslims themselves. Interesting terminologies, e.g. ‘hate-speech’ have been introduced and then attacked, to root out intellectual, educational, emotional, convincing and most importantly hard-truth discussions upon sensitive issues.

The Prophet of Islam (Peace be upon him) may be slandered, cartooned and joked upon within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan but it is very, very important to protect the life of a non-Muslim within Pakistan. Well, it just so happens that the life of non-Muslim living on the Muslim land was sanctified by the Prophet of Islam (Peace be upon him) himself in the following words,

Religion, like any other constitution, is a combination of compassion and retribution. Likewise is Nature; summers and winters, seas and mountains, flowers and thorns, and so on coexist. This is the balance and equilibrium which is vital for the universe to exist and by analogy, for societies to exist. Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him) was a mercy for the whole world, and hence very compassionate towards all mankind. However, if anyone messed with the Muslims or Islam, he and his disciples protected the Islamic ideological boundaries well, just like a soldier standing at the borders.